Macmillan runs a graduate recruitment scheme and has done for more than thirty years. We are the only publisher in Britain (and maybe in the world) to have consistently and systematically tried to bring into the industry high-calibre people without a specific job vacancy. It has been a great success within Macmillan (five of our current crop of managing directors are from the scheme and 25 are not - it is not the sole qualification) and within the industry (two of the top six British publishers are run by ex-Macmillan graduate recruits and they occupy many other top slots).

I have just interviewed six of this year's applicants and I'm confident that the traditon of excellence will continue. The industry continues to be attractive for the best and the brightest but we need to maintain that by being and being seen to be innovative and relevant. Sometimes that is a bit of a challenge.

The new head of the HMV Group (which owns Waterstone's), Simon Fox, has had to open his tenure with a profits warning and announcement of a significant number of store closures as described here. I'm sure that there are cost savings to be made in the book supply chain and we are going to work with the new team to find and implement them. Right now a book is handled around twenty times between printer and purchaser and every handling costs money and introduces the chance of error. While we're doing that (which inevitably involves introspection) it's vital that Waterstone's (along with all other retailers) don't forget to look outwards at their customer base and its expectations. I do hope 'more emphasis on novels, cookery and children's books and less on "academic and humanities" areas' doesn't mean what I think it means - further homogenisation of the bookshop experience. Mind you, if it does, then independent booksellers should be able to benefit from filling the gap.

A few weeks ago I wrote about one of the earliest author tours (Kipling in Melbourne in 1891). This morning I was sent evidence of one of the most recent - Julia Donaldson in the Children's Bookshop in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Here she is in the overflowing shop conducting the children in the Gruffalo Song and you can hear it here courtesy of Radio New Zealand. Some authors go to a long way to reach their readers and we go a long way to support them. If you weren't in Christchurch at the time you can find 112 titles by Julia on Macmillan Children's Books website.

Whenever I think of New Zealand, rugby comes to mind. I was slightly shocked to see in the email about Julia that they don't rate England's chances in the forthcoming World Cup (incidentally this is a link to the unofficial site, the official site isn't working). They are probably right but the discovery of four world-class newcomers on Saturday when England beat France at least gives us hope. But the more miraculous rugby development is the emergence of Italy as a serious competitor. Italy today, Netherlands tomorrow, Germany soon after and then the big one, Russia. I'd love to attend the first Russia-New Zealand test match.

The last architectural monument on my route to work is not very beautiful, decidedly impractical but strange enough to catch the eye - a lighthouse on Pentonville Road. London's a strange old city.

One of the joys of living in England is BBC Radio 4 where you can tune in at almost any time and hear something of interest, irritation, novelty or fun. I heard for the first time yesterday Robert Conquest's brilliant compression of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man. His goes:

First you get puking and mewling
Then very p—ed off with your schooling
Then f—s and then fights
Then judging chaps’ rights
Then sitting in slippers–then drooling.

This article in the Independent reports on analysis of a survey undertaken by Kevin Killeen, co-author with Peter Forshaw of the Word and the World.

To summarise, the survey of a thousand people (in Britain, I assume) found which books were most owned and least finished.

In fiction the winners are:Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling; Ulysses by James Joyce; Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

In non-fiction:The Blunkett Tapes; My Life by Bill Clinton; Beckham by guess who; Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss; Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

I have sympathy with the non-finishing readers. I have a house full of unfinished books. However, I think the survey is flawed. Best sellers are bound to lead the way. These books probably also have the largest number of finishers.

My suspicion is that the total number of books purchased and never finished is enormous and may well represent more than 100% of the total profits from publishing rather like Colman's Mustard whose business model is based on what is left on the plate.

My architectural route to work is nearly complete when I pass the strangely decrepit-looking but beautiful St Pancras Parish Church and its caryatid porch.

Finally, I am grateful to Clive Keeble for pointing out this excellent article on digitisation of archives from the New York Times and his contention (correct in my view) that digitisation is not a complete alternative to hard copy preservation.

There's nothing like an intellectual spat to liven up a Sunday morning. Later this week we are publishing Lloyd George and Churchill by the Cambridge historian Richard Toye.

During the course of his research for the book he discovered a previously unpublished 1937 document by the soon-to-be British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The document can be interpreted as suggesting that he was less sympathetic to the Jewish predicament than future events would have suggested. In any event the world's most famous Churchill scholar, Martin Gilbert, has come out fighting on behalf of Churchill and the press are having fun - The Observer, The Independent and The Times have all run stories and I'm sure there's more to come. Google News has already found 31 stories. Of course, if you want the really definitive biography of Churchill there is nothing better than Roy Jenkins's Churchill which is underpriced at £9.99 for a 1000-page paperback!

Whilst on the political theme, I attended a launch on Friday at the German Information Centre in London of Palgrave Studies in European Politics Series. The drinks and speeches were preceded by a day-long seminar on current and future agendas for the European Union. I must confess that I'd rather the EU had no agenda but that's clearly a personal and narrow-minded view. What is much more important is that we publish freely and participate in the debate. If you click here you'll be able to see Palgrave Macmillan's voluminous politics catalogue and get some idea of the contribution we are making. This is publishing of the highest importance.

While all major publishers are constructing digital warehouses along the lines of our BookStore project there's still demand for physical books and they too need secure and efficient housing. This photo of our new warehouse in Mexico City gives some idea of the scale of our business there. The books will be moved in from several warehouses belonging to Macmillan de Mexico and Castillo in order to consolidate, improve productivity and enhance service levels to the schools, the Government, distributors and booksellers throughout Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

Elsewhere in the world one of our sales people was surprised to see this sign in the usually respectable Germany. Apologies for any offence caused but it deserves to be shared.

And, on this pictorial Saturday, another landmark building on my way to work, the British Museum, and here is a picture of the wonderful new Reading Room furnished with books purchased from publishers at terms negotiated by Paul Hamlyn. He was a tough negotiator but he believed in paying for 'content'.

Incidentally, in deference to Clive Keeble's comments yesterday, I think I've avoided a direct link to the site on which I found this image. You learn something every day in this blogging business.

Here's a quote from a review in today's Times of the too young, too pretty, too successful Nell Freudenberger's first novel The Dissident published by Picador. She might be as described but she is clearly the real thing as a writer too.

To discover a young writer not disappearing into postmodern doodling or navel-gazing but training her formidable acuity on big themes – authenticity and copying, truth and lies, posterity and the present – is news indeed.

Freudenberger’s novel unfolds into that rare thing, a work of poetics itself, a meditation on the nature of representation in art. The fact that she does it with such wit and compassion, such generosity of mind and heart, is miraculous.

Yesterday evening I attended a debate organised by the Authors' Collecting and Licensing Society and held at the British Library. The speakers were distinguished - three writers, one media executive, one book publisher and an MP - the auditorium was full of intelligent and interested people, the chairman was the excellent John Humphrys. Unfortunately and worryingly, the debate was trivial, shallow, anecdotal, self-serving, smug and boring. Apart from that it was okay. In an era where technology and social change are challenging copyright more fundamentally than at any time since its inception, the debate was typified by an anecdote about a magazine sublicensing an article to another magazine in Australia without informing the author. It was really a moan session between authors and publishers. Authors and publishers are on the same side when it comes to copyright and intra-trade squabbling will only serve to weaken the vital case for the retention and adaptation of copyright as a rewarder and guarantor of literary and other creativity. Harrumph.

On the other hand, this eloquent essay by Peter Brantley at the University of California Berkeley Library describing second thoughts about accepting Google's offer to digitise their books is much more germane. And I'm grateful to Michael Cairns and his Persona Non Data blog for this link.

The guy on the right of this photo is Peter Collins who, amongst many other responsibilities, is in charge of advertising at Nature Publishing Group. He is hard to recognise here because his shirt is white and tucked in.

Back in December I wrote about our experiment of allowing recruiters free advertisements in the online editions of our journals while charging for premium upgrades and word-associated links. I described it as 'another great moment in classified advertising'. The photo shows Peter, representing the Nature Jobs team, accepting the first prize in the Online Recruitment Awards Ceremony, a tribute to innovation and another great moment in classified advertising.

Yesterday's papers printed obituaries of two very different people both of whose inventions have changed millions of lives around the world -  Robert Adler with the TV remote control and more importantly for me Alejandro Finisterre who designed, built and eventually patented table football.

Next stop on my way to work is Shaftesbury Avenue and its theatres. Here's a non-contemporary picture for the sake of nostalgia.

Stop press: Try this link for an outstanding headline.

There is a rule in fiction publishing. Publishers should never encourage their authors to meet each other. It can only end in unionisation, jealousy, and collegiate authorial carping. We broke the rule last night at the Savile Club (although we were in a slightly less palatial room than this one).

The event was a Society of Bookmen (yes, bookmen not bookpersons) dinner where the guest speaker was Brian Martin, the author of North. He spoke about the problems of finding a publisher when your work might not fit into a currently popular genre. He was one of the first (if not the first) authors in the Macmillan New Writing series, a project for which we received a significant roasting from established literary commentators.

The project was, of course, a risk but not as risky as having five of its authors at the same dinner. Somehow we survived.

A little while ago I reprinted an interview from the excellent journal for publishers, vendors and librarians, Against the Grain. I've just received the printed copy and it looks great but more importantly the issue is full of fasinating and entertaining articles. Here is just one example - an alphabetical fable about Article and Book (aka Ant and Bee) meeting Google written by Margaret Landesman of the Marriott Library at the University of Utah.

My route to work this morning took me past one of the great bookshops of the world, Hatchards, which has managed to retain (and enhance) its identity in spite of ownership changes and varying corporate philosophies. Hooray.

I was surprised to be told by a reader yesterday that one of the Google ads which appeared here was for a product to fight insomnia. I'd have thought that the blog itself would suffice.

And the Otto Preminger story the other day reminded an old friend of the wonderful Dorothy Parker line:

"The two best words in the English language:Check Enclosed".